Sign in

The Balance of the Court

There has been a lot of talk lately around the New Yorker water cooler (which is not actually a water cooler but a vending machine that dispenses words like recherché and chimera) about the Supreme Court, and about our fears that the justices spend too much of their time talking around the water cooler. There has also been a lot of talk about “the balance of the court,” and about how likely nominee Sonia Sotomayor wouldn’t change it. No kidding, I say. She surely won’t affect the balance of the Supreme Court—if she stays off of it.

Think about it: eight justices is a perfect number. Let’s say the justices want to play some hoops after work, then go out for pizza, then over to Scalia’s house for a game of Scattergories. Right. So you’ve got a lopsided basketball game, a restaurant that hates you because nobody wants to make a pizza that’s “five-ninths pepperoni, four-ninths mushroom,” and Scattergories with nine people? That’s no way to level the playing field, no matter how you look at it.

Here at the Cartoon Lounge we’ve got four people, which means we’ve got perfect balance in every way. Usually two of us will want to go to lunch at Applebee’s and the other two won’t even be awake yet, something like that. We make Zach pay for everything, even if he’s not there. If we happen to disagree? That’s what a coin flip is for. Why couldn’t Ms. Sotomayor just hang out and be the Phone-a-Friend option, like on “Do You Want to be a Millionaire” or “Cash Cab”? It would be fun, right? As it is now, I don’t know what television channel the Supreme Court is even on.

Drew Dernavich is a cartoonist. He has been contributing to The New Yorker since 2002 and has published over two hundred and fifty cartoons.